After reading the post about the 1893 S Dollar just below, and the comments alluding to it being a fake, here's my Chinese Morgan dollar story.

Along with the 250+ Morgans and Peace dollars I bought at eBay, I bought a few fakes along the way. I thought I'd share what I learned.

The coins in the pictures are all fake Chinese counterfeits that I bought through eBay auctions. I had one more but the seller refunded my money when I let her know that she sold me a counterfeit coin. Once I got it from her it was obvious in my hand. There was a spot worn through and you could see the copper/brass color inside. I felt bad for the seller because I could tell that she didn't know herself. Of the seven in the pictures, I also got money money back on all of them but one ..... and I got to keep the coins as well. Once I learned what to look for, I went back and looked at all my other 250 dollars to see if there were any other fakes, and I found just this one other, but it was so long ago there wasn't anything I could do about that one. So my fake Chinese Morgan dollar education only cost me a grand total of $22.00 And along with an education on the fake coins, I also learned about the fake coin sellers.

First the coins. They've gotten better, the weight is almost spot on. They are no longer magnetic. If you were unlucky enough to have bought one and then questioned it's authenticity once you got it in your hand, here's two ways I've learned to pretty much tell for sure. First is the thickness. In order to get the weight right, they've made them ever so slightly thicker. But if you lay one on a flat surface right next to a real Morgan or Peace, you can feel the height difference. It's obvious. Hard to see but you can definitely feel the difference. The other way is the tone. Spin a real Morgan just a little and listen to the ring tone as it falls to the table. Do that a few times and then the same with the counterfeit, and unless you're tone deaf, you'll hear that the counterfeits have a much duller tone. Very obviously different.

Next the sellers. The reason I got to keep the coins is because the sellers don't respond to return requests or any contact from the buyers (me) at all. They don't even respond to eBay when eBay contacts them. So each time eBay tells me I can keep the coin and then after about a week they refund my purchase price.

I also learned how to spot these fake sellers before bidding on a coin, so my days of buying fakes ended a few years ago.

Almost all the sellers have a very small amount of feedback sales and scores. Their sales are usually listed as private bidders, so you can't check that. Then what sales they do have are always over a year old so you cannot see the items they sold or look up the item numbers through eBay search. They almost always charge $5 for shipping. Many will include in their listing that it might take a couple of weeks to get the coin. If you try to ask them a question about the coin before you bid, you will get an automatic response that says this seller does not take questions. Their listing almost always say that they are in New York or somewhere else back east. And if you still bid on the coin after checking all that and then you get it, it will be in a China Post package from somewhere in China, and not New York.

As you can see from the pictures, there's some pretty nice cartwheeling happening on a few of the coins. The weight is almost spot on, but when you look at the coins on edge, a real Morgan is in the middle and three fakes on either side. You can just make out the thickness difference by looking, but you can really tell by feeling.

$22 was a pretty good education, and if you check all those things I mentioned before you actually bid on any Silver Dollar, you won't be buying counterfeits from China. Hope this helps somebody.

Great post! I have purchased quite a few Morgans on Ebay and luckily have not received a fake Morgan, yet. I'm very picky with which dealers on the bay that I buy them from. I would not mind having one of the latest generation fake Morgans for educational purposes. They are getting better with their counterfeits, that's for sure.

So far I only have one counterfeit coin, I think it's referred to as a fantasy coin. I bought it from a coin shop I deal with alot. They made sure I knew it was not real but I had to have it because I know there are not many collections with a nice looking 1888 CC. :-)

Rookie with bad eyes, take what I say with a grain of salt and call an expert in the morning!

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